Abel Charles Thomas was a Universalist evangelist, minister, journalist, and historian. Although he served the Universalist church in Philadelphia in two separate pastorates totaling nearly twenty-five years and there wrote two of the most celebrated pieces of nineteenth-century Universalist controversial literature, he is most remembered for his short pastorate in Lowell, Massachusetts, where, as one of the founders and editor of the literary magazine, the Lowell Offering, he was a mentor to aspiring writers amongst the young women working in the textile mills (John C. Morgan, Unitarian Universalist Historical Society).Thomas was also active in Philadelphia antislavery work. Iron Gray was a pseudonym used by Thomas.